“You should come to the gasket convention in Orlando the first week in April,” said my husband David a few months back.
“Gaskets! What are gaskets anyway?”
“O-rings. You know, GASKETS, things used to make a joint water- or air- or particle-tight.”
“Come on there are no gaskets anymore, only microchips,” I said back, just to get him going. He’s in manufacturing, an industry which here America is diminishing like a cookie-tin-full of Shrinky-Dinks in a hot oven.
“Hey don’t kid yourself, you couldn’t live without O-rings,” and if that wasn’t the language of courtship I don’t know what was, and so Yes, I said yes, I said yes, I will go with you.
And thus do I write this in sunny central Florida, where over the heads of a cool 1,000 conventioneers, families and staff, clouds of infinitesimal bugs hover like wee guardian angels.
This morning I spent a few hours at the kiddy pool, which I chose for the democracy of the place, the lack of all display except for the simplest display.
“Dis is my bellybutton,” a three-year-old said to his new friend and I felt I was in Heaven itself, just being alone and looking around. There was no preening by the young and unlined, nobody worriedly studying the backside of anyone else, just me reading a story in which the main character finds herself touring Ireland as a passenger in the car her mother has to rent because the mother could drive stick. Every day she sits on what should be the driver’s side but without the steering wheel until she begins to feel like a child again and thinks, “I’m back.”
That’s how I felt: I was back, a little kid again with just these small splashing strangers and the solitude.
I’d had solitude at breakfast too and there swooned so deep inside myself that when afterward I stopped at a little table to dig out the apple and the yogurt that I’d tossed into my tote bag I almost tripped over my very own husband sitting and sitting having coffee with his co-worker Moe.
“Brian didn’t come in til 1:30,” Moe was saying of a third compatriot.
“Wait, does he make you share a room?” I asked, mostly to tease Dave a little as the president of this company they all work for.
“Nah,” said Moe. “I couldn’t share a room with anyone anyway. Even when I got married I said to my wife, ‘Maybe we should just live together like three nights a week.’”
“I get that. David and I are second babies; both our moms said we loved just playing alone in our cribs. I just feel safe when I’m alone. I can’t even sit with my back to a door. It’s like I was in the Mob in a former life.”
He was looking now at my food items. “A little something for later, eh? You should’ve seen my mother in a restaurant. When she got up from the table that table was BARE. Rolls, cole slaw even: right into her bag. I do it too, a little.”
“Sure. I’m on the road a lot myself. Take today: here’s this giant breakfast buffet and all I had of it was an egg and some toast and coffee for my $15.95.“
“And you never know when the next service plaza is.”
“I’ve often thought with adult diapers in my life and I could keep on driving forever. I’m grateful for good muscle control though.”
“I’ve said it before,” my husband piped up. “We’d all be sunk without the O-Rings.”
